Her lack of sleep showed in her lackluster responses to the Mass. She thought through possible scenarios as to why Prenter’s account had been deleted. An account could be accidentally deleted, but that seemed too coincidental. Or Prenter himself might have deleted it to avoid a trail of evidence. That was more likely, but why? Because he’d planned to drug and rape “Tanya”?
That went against type. He hadn’t gone to any lengths to cover up his rape of Sara Tyson, which yielded physical evidence that had aided in his conviction. Still, he could have learned from that experience and become more cautious.
After communion, Lucy knelt and prayed, pushing all thoughts of Prenter from her mind. Someone knelt next to her, and she automatically shifted away while glancing at the person. She didn’t like being snuck up on.
“Cody,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry about last night.”
“Shh.” She wasn’t going to argue with him in church, even if he was apologizing.
Ten minutes later, Mass was over, but Lucy didn’t leave. She turned to Cody after the recessional and said, “Prenter’s chat account was deleted.”
He looked confused. “Why is that important? Lucy, anything could have happened to his account. The police could have locked it.”
“It’s been deleted.”
“They could have archived it, then deleted the public copy.”
“There are no archives on that site, except for private messages. I never sent him a private message.”
“I think you’re making a big deal over nothing.”
At first Lucy was enraged—it wasn’t nothing; then she noticed Cody’s brow was furrowed. He was at least thinking about her concerns.
“I need to know what happened, Cody. I have run the scenario every way I can think of and some are plausible, but I need to know.”
“Why is this important to you?”
“Because—” Why was it? Why did she care? She glanced at the corpus of Christ suspended on the wall behind the altar.
She’d killed Adam Scott and didn’t regret it. He’d deserved worse, but her lack of guilt had bothered her for years. She’d talked to her brother Patrick about it, only him, and he’d dismissed it. “You feel guilty because you don’t feel guilty about killing the man who raped you, who nearly killed Dillon and Kate? Don’t.”
Lucy had become desensitized by the violence in the world around her. She’d experienced pain and humiliation, she’d killed a human being, and she was immersed in an online world where sex predators were the norm, where they constantly hunted for victims. She didn’t want to take murder in stride, even the death of a convicted rapist.
“I don’t want to take anyone’s death lightly,” she said.
“I understand.” Maybe he did. “I’ll look a little deeper.”
“Thank you.”
“Want to go for breakfast?”
Sean. She glanced at her watch. It was already after ten. “I have plans,” she said.
“Oh, maybe a rain check then—” Something over her shoulder caught Cody’s attention and he straightened into his alpha cop stance.
She looked behind her and saw Sean walking toward them. Her heart quickened when he caught her eye and smiled.
“You didn’t tell me you were seeing someone,” Cody said, his voice hard, as if she were cheating on him.
“I’m not,” she said automatically.
“You were with him last night.”
Cody didn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure if she believed herself, either. “I mean, it’s not serious.” Yet. “We’re just …” Why did she have to explain anything to her ex-boyfriend?
Sean came up to them, putting his hand on Lucy’s back. “Officer Lorenzo,” he said in greeting.
“Rogan.” He said to Lucy, “I’ll call you if I learn anything.” Then he left.
“Did I say something?” Sean asked.
Lucy shook her head. “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”
“How long ago?”
“Over a year. Sorry—I don’t know why he’s acting so strange.”
Sean raised his eyebrow. “You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“He’s still in love with you.”
She shook her head and looked toward where Cody had walked out, but he was gone. “I don’t think so.” Was he? No, she didn’t think so. Maybe.
“Luce, I’m a guy, I can tell.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Tell me he doesn’t have a chance of getting you back.”
She let Sean’s words sink in, her eyes widening. “He doesn’t.”
“Good.” He kissed her again. “You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep well.”
“Hungry?”
“I could eat.”
“You’ll need the energy for what I have planned.”
“What is that?”
“It’s a surprise.” He took her hand. “Let’s go.”
“You’re going to burn out,” Noah said to Kate when he walked into the computer room at Quantico at noon on Sunday.
She shot him a glare that might be described as the evil eye. “You’re here.”
“It’s my case.”
“It’s my family.”
Noah wasn’t going to win this battle. “Abigail spoke to the regional vice-president at the rental company, faxed him the administrative subpoena, and he said he would give us the GPS logs tomorrow morning if possible—it’s a holiday, but he’s working on it.”
“Good.”
Kate was back staring at the computer. “I have something, too. I have a list of every email address in Morton’s address book. I still haven’t recovered the messages themselves, but I’m getting closer.”
“How do we match those up to real people?”
“Some are easy—names attached to the emails. Some are harder, but I know some tricks.”
“What about going to the ISP?”
She glanced at him, eyebrow raised. “So you’re not as technically incompetent as you act.”
“I know the basics.”
“Internet service providers are less likely to turn over any private customer information without a warrant—they’re not as friendly as the rental company. So we need probable cause, such as an email exchange that is obviously criminal in nature, or that we can show is criminal based on other evidence. Here’s a list of everyone I’ve found so far—I highlighted those who are in Morton’s file as being a known associate.”
“I’ll pull addresses and see who’s local,” Noah said, feeling the familiar excitement in his gut telling him this was a turning point in the investigation.
“I have dozens I haven’t identified yet. The second list are those I have names for but aren’t on Morton’s associate list. That’s a little longer. My guess, those are the people who sent in disks for his porn site.”
“Why are they doing it? Morton didn’t have money to pay them.”
“Some people send in for free—those are usually amateurs who do the up-skirt videos or home movies. Some people have a deal with the site to be paid per view, so when someone watches the video they get paid. Trask had recorded more than half of his own material—he used prostitutes, drug addicts, anyone who’d do anything for a couple hundred dollars. But he’d make tens of thousands of dollars off the recording.”
Noah shook his head. “And that’s all legal.”